Musical chairs for one Patent Troll Tracker suit

A high-profile defamation suit filed against the Patent Troll Tracker blogger is getting passed around from judge to judge up in the Eastern District of Texas. Last year, in state court in Gregg County, Longview lawyer Eric Albritton of Albritton Law Firm filed a defamation suit against Cisco Systems Inc. and the blogger, in-house lawyer Richard Frenkel, Eric M. Albritton v. Cisco Systems Inc., et al. Albritton’s suit –- like a related one, John Ward Jr. v. Cisco Systems Inc., et al. , filed by Longview’s John Ward Jr., a partner in Ward & Smith --  relates to blog entries Frenkel posted in October 2007 that alleged the two East Texas lawyers conspired with the Eastern District Clerk's Office to alter the filing date of an infringement suit filed against Cisco. [Read the Texas Lawyer story here.] Albritton filed his petition in Gregg County Court-at-Law No. 2, where Charles Alfonso is the judge. But in March, Cisco removed the suit to the Tyler division of U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. It was assigned to U.S. District Judge Michael Schneider. But on July 7, Schneider recused himself, and a deputy clerk reassigned it to U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis, the other federal judge in the Tyler division. On July 10, Davis also recused himself. Neither judge gave a reason for bowing out. On July 11, following local rules, U.S. District Judge Thad Heartfield of Beaumont, the chief judge of the Eastern District, reassigned the suit to U.S. District Judge Richard Schell of Sherman. In his Order of Reassignment, Heartfield wrote that the rules require him to assign the suit to a judge in another division when all of the judges in a division are recused or disqualified. U.S. District Judge T. John Ward of Texarkana presumably wasn’t an option, since John Ward Jr. is his son. In Ward's suit, there's 1:30  p.m. hearing on Aug. 4 before U.S. District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren on Ward's motion to dismiss Frenkel from the suit. [Read more from Texas Lawyer here.]
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys